


what we are not capable of

by fallenprotector



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Abstraction, Dreams, Flower Gore, M/M, Mild to moderate gore, Trypophobia, feather gore, god damn, i dont know, im not sure if this counts but just being safe, lucisan - Freeform, sandy and lyria friendship, uh, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-19 23:33:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14883365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallenprotector/pseuds/fallenprotector
Summary: "If I could choose, I would not want you to live at the mercy of your dreams."





	1. needed

**Author's Note:**

> SO after months of thinking and ruminating about sandalphon, i think this fic is my final "thesis" on how i feel about him... it's messy, abstract, and doesn't make sense, which is honestly a great descriptor of me as a person eating cool ranch doritos and crying into my keyboard. maybe it's a metaphor, sure
> 
> at any rate there are defo things about this that are self-indulgent and i wouldn't consider me the canonest canon there is. but these characters made me feel something and i wanted to try conveying that, whatever it is.
> 
> ALSO i have a twitter @fallenprotect0r now where you can bug me

Here, the sunlight that peers through swaying trees tastes sweet and leaves honey ripples along the skin. That much never changes. 

Some things, Sandalphon knows, will stay even after two thousand years.

His bare chest heaves, shuddering as careless sunbeams dance along his neck. There are cracks in the weathered stone beneath him asking for his soul, whispering  _ if you were just small enough you could slip through here, we could help you. If you could curl in on yourself just so, we might take you somewhere quiet, somewhere dark that even your thoughts can’t go. _

This is different -- the dream does not start like this. 

“I cannot go,” he replies, hoarse. “I am needed, now.”

Little sprouts of green crawl through from below. They snake beneath Sandalphon’s nails and trace lines up his arms, along the lifelines, the veins that do not make nor unmake him. Not like a mortal -- their lives are in their roots whether they like it or not, where they bleed. But his life is buried deep in the chest of this imitation body. A vessel constructed to mimic them but never to understand them, never to approach the gentleness of their fragile lives. The vines reach toward his center in mocking circles where a core is buried deep; ferns curl and tuck the sunlight away between their spirals. It’s cold, now. They thieve the warmth of daylight away from his skin and pull, pull him down so that he might sink into stone and dirt. 

“Do you wish you were more like us, Sandalphon?” 

Blue. Turning his head he sees her, the girl in blue against the sky. Standing over him and watching the green cover him completely. A halo of light behind her head. “Maybe if the Astrals hadn’t made you at all… and now, if you didn’t have to protect the skies, you could rest. Couldn’t you?” Her hair flutters in the wind, shimmering. “But even if you sleep, you have nightmares. You can’t really rest at all.”

Leaves brush Sandalphon’s throat as the ferns close in. Answer her -- talk to her, he urges but his body is leaden and far away. His voice hovers somewhere beyond his grasp, maybe in the sun beating down on him, scalding. Yes, if he could just reach that high, he could get it back. 

“You’re so tired, Sandalphon. I’m sorry... I wish I could help. But I can’t save you if you don’t want to save yourself.” She kneels behind his head. He can’t crane his neck far enough upward to look at her, but feels cold hands cup his cheeks. She hums a little song that the wind chimes, hanging low in the cypress trees, begin to sing with her. “You want to give up, don’t you? It’s okay -- sometimes I do, too. Sometimes, I wonder...”

The ferns pry under his tender eyelids and reach inside. She is still humming. A smile lives in her voice.

“Were we both born just to be used?”

Sandalphon gasps into waking with scratches on his face. The sheets of this creaking bed on this rickety ship thousands of feet above the islands are wound tight around his legs and torso, choking. He swallows and looks down at the bloody nails on his shaking hands.

When Lyria asks him if he wants to share a morning coffee, he walks past without meeting her eyes.


	2. checkmate

Thorns scrape and claw at Sandalphon’s legs as he runs. Tall, dark hedges fly past endlessly. Overhead he cypress trees bend inward and curl together until they form a tunnel that blocks out the light, the guiding sun overhead. Where he is going and why he can’t be sure but he must run. He must keep going.

_no one is coming to retrieve_

Try as he might, he can’t summon his wings. Instead he screams as bone rips open the flesh at his back and blood splatters behind him as he runs through this maze that the garden never had. A harsh wind whips through the brush and gnaws cold at his open wounds.

_the sacrificial pawn_

A root snags his foot and he falls forward onto his knees. He bruises so easily, feels blood blossoming beneath his skin. At his throat he feels a blade of stone. Towering before him, the queen in a hooded robe, white hair and blue eyes smiling down from on high. The maze floor is checkered in red and white.

_lying discarded by the board_

Sandalphon draws both arms around his stomach and laughs until he feels sick, hunching forward on the ground. Blood drips freely down his back but it is cold, numbed. Nothing is his. Nothing he is belongs to him, always to someone else, always at the mercy of the realities that pick him apart with hungry thorns like scalpels.

He waits for the queen to strike.

“Sandalphon?”

The wind ceases. A familiar voice draws Sandalphon’s head upward. The queen is gone; her move is unfinished. The cypress trees bend backward and the hedges sink their roots back into the dirt, bowing to the sun.

Blue eyes meet his gaze, shining through the verdant overgrowth.

The king stands before Sandalphon, bare apart from the six radiant wings curled around his statuesque frame. They exchange silent stares as wind passes through the open garden, breathing melody into the wind chimes that hang from nearby trees. Sunlight in pink and gold forms his crown, cradles him on all sides.

Wordlessly, he holds out his hand toward Sandalphon, beckoning. Both are still.

“This is a dream.”

Sandalphon cleaves the silence with sharp words. He looks through him. “Lucifer is gone. You are an apparition of my own making, meant to torment me… I won’t let you.” Slowly, he rises to his feet, arms still cradling his torso. His shoulders tremble with laughter.

“Why must you haunt me like this? Every morning I think of you, every night I see you mangled and lifeless when I sleep, every waking hour, I try to forget what you left behind -- you never leave! You’re gone, but you’ll _never go!”_

Something quiet and unfamiliar crosses the king’s gaze. He simply nods. A circle of blood begins to drip around his neck, trailing down his collar.

“Checkmate,” he whispers.

His body scatters into white petals on the wind.


	3. echoes

“Singularity.”

Gran blinks, meeting Sandalphon’s heavy auburn eyes. The guy clearly hasn’t slept in days -- at least, not the whole night through. Maybe the rest of the crew doesn’t hear it, but on those nights that he lays awake and worries for them most, he listens to Sandalphon’s restless footsteps clunking above deck. Pacing in endless circles. 

They’re standing just a few feet apart, but all the distance of the skies lingers between them. 

“Yeah?” 

“Tell me. Last night, did you…” 

Sandalphon averts his gaze. What he’s thinking, what he’s seen -- that’s the million rupee question, isn’t it? Lyria says she understands him, but Lyria understands just about everybody; her heart’s bigger than anybody Gran has ever known. And if it’s not big enough to fit someone, she always finds a way to grow, to make room. He can learn a lot from her, he knows. 

“Did I…?” He encourages with a slight nod.

_ Talking to this guy is like trying not to scare off a bird…  _

“Never mind.” There goes the chance, spreading its wings and fluttering away. Damn. Sandalphon’s lip curls as he swivels on his heel. “It doesn’t concern--”

“If you mean that strange energy, yeah. I sensed it, too.”

Sandalphon stops walking, but does not turn around. Gran looks through his back. His voice is firm. Maybe that’s what it’ll take.

“Listen, Sandalphon… I’m not going to tell the rest of the crew how to feel about you. I respect them enough not to do that. I respect everyone who sets foot on this ship,” his voice softens. “And for all the things we’ve been through, that still includes you. So really, if you need to talk--”

“I need nothing from you.” Sandalphon casts a hard glare over his shoulder. “Not from you, nor anyone else here. Your duty is not to coddle and protect me. Spare me your pity.”

“But it’s your duty now to protect  _ us _ , huh? And you think that means hiding away what you feel? Lying about it? We’re a crew, Sandalphon, we protect each other. You don’t have to go it alone like this!”

_ “Enough!” _

Gran is silent as Sandalphon’s voice bites through the air, reverberating. His eyes widen as his fingers ghost his throat. Without another word, he storms below deck and slams the door behind him.

_ Some captain I am, huh?  _

Gran sighs and looks across the skies, into the pale gold dawn.


	4. simple

“Have you browsed the library, Sandalphon?”

“Hm?” He looks up from the his coffee cup, meeting Lucifer’s smile with tentative curiosity. His cappuccino curls shift in the garden breeze. “Am I… allowed to do such a thing? I had thought only the Astrals could study there.”

“Ordinarily, yes. But you and I are free to, as well. If you are interested in reading, I will go with you.”

“N-no, you don’t need to. You have plenty more pressing matters to attend to, I am sure.”

Lucifer’s smile is faint. Distant, though he is only across the little table they share. Sandalphon wonders if he has misspoke and opens his mouth slightly, then closes it. The gesture seems to pull Lucifer from his thoughts, his springtime voice renewed on a passing breeze that makes the wind chimes sing.

“Perhaps I do.” He lifts his cup and takes a sip. His gaze lifts, mesmerized by the steam that rises from the porcelain cradle into the garden air. It vanishes among the white roses and bleeding hearts that frame their little shaded corner. “However, I would enjoy visiting with you when we are able... the Astrals have compiled a great deal of knowledge and resources here. Many of these books they have written themselves, but others are taken from across the skies. I have grown fond of skydweller poetry, in particular.”

Sandalphon nods, watching as Lucifer looks up into the clouds where he cannot follow. 

“There is something fascinating about poetry, I have found. So many words skydwellers have penned to express what cannot be explained, and to reinvent what is already explained… a rebirth of reality through new words. Even once they grasp the science of something, still, they describe it in such beautiful, abstract ways.”

“What purpose does that serve?” Sandalphon’s brow furrows. “Why would they seek to complicate what is true? What they already know?”

“It is the opposite. Where knowledge is complexity, poetry is simplicity. It is embracing things as they are, and celebrating them. I was quite captivated by a passage I read the other day… it reminded me of you.”

The sky turns from blue to gray. The glass table is checkered white and dripping red. Shattered stone chess pieces litter its surface and the dirt below.

When he moves to take a sip of his coffee, the cup in Sandalphon’s hands is gone. 

“It begins with a simple question.”

Instead he meets a pair of cold, listless eyes, cradled between his palms.

Across the table sits a headless corpse.


	5. friend

In the lamplight, shadows curl between Sandalphon’s bloody feathers. His chest rises and falls and when he is sleeping, Lyria thinks, he is more like a little sparrow than a bird of prey. 

She reaches out. 

“Are you awake?”

Jolting upright, Sandalphon grasps a fistful of the sheets beneath him. Lyria gasps as her hand darts away from his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you. Um…”

Her grip tightens on the washcloth in her hand. She glances at the small basin of water on a bedside bureau, then returns her gaze to Sandalphon’s sharp eyes. His brow furrows. 

“Where are we?”

“We’re in the Grandcypher. You, um, you passed out earlier today, as soon as we got home from Port Breeze.” She wrings the fabric in her hands slightly. “But don’t worry, you’re going to be okay. You must’ve just pushed yourself too hard fighting off those runaway boars.”

It was frightening when he collapsed onto his knees, sprawled out on the splintering deck. Just like that battle with the monster in the Celestial Stait, just like a shimmering star hurtling down toward oblivion; though his light is quieter, Lyria still sees it. She knows that it is still there in his heart. 

Those wings on his back looked so heavy, then.

With a sigh, Sandalphon averts his eyes. “You didn’t scare m-- agh!” Wincing, he flinches and bends forward, shoulders trembling. Lyria jumps and steadies him, returning her hand to his shoulder.  

“Be careful! You’re still hurt. Please lay back down, okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Not this time. He can’t run away, now. Lyria meets his blackened eyes with an unflinching stare. 

“No, you’re not.”

Sandalphon’s mouth hangs open slightly, then closes. Was that too much? Is he upset? Maybe he needs to be, before anything will get better. Lyria shakes her head. 

“I know that’s not true, Sandalphon. And I know that you don’t want to trust us… I understand how hard it must be to trust anyone, to believe that anyone really does care about you. But I’m here. I’m right here, so… so…”

Lyria inhales, shuddering as tears well in her eyes. He won’t talk to Gran. He avoids everyone else, stays locked all the time in his room and the only way she knows that he is here that he is still real is the smell of coffee that wafts through the lower deck each morning. He lives only on the ghost of the steam rising from each cup. 

These tears she cries are not hers.  

“I just want to--”

A hand brushes the tears away from her cheek. Lyria draws a quiet breath and looks at Sandalphon, whose expression is silent and unreadable. 

“You want to help,” he mutters. “But some things cannot be fixed.” His hand withdraws. “You have spared me kindness enough. If you were to give any more, you would carve yourself hollow.”

Quietly, Lyria's expression dissolves into laughter. “It doesn’t hurt me to be your friend, Sandalphon.”

The flame in its glass home sputters. Between them is only the musky smell of cedar and an agreed-upon silence. 

“Why do you have those?”

“Huh? Oh, well,” Lyria smiles sheepishly, following his gaze to the basin of water. “Your wings are all dirty… and you’re in a lot of pain, so maybe standing up for a shower would be hard. I thought, if you wanted, I could wash them for you.”

“Wh-- do I look like a helpless baby bird to you?”

_ Maybe?  _ “No, no!” She waves both hands. “It’s just uncomfortable being all dirty, isn’t it? Your feathers look so sad.”

“You just want to feel them, don’t you?”

Oops. Lyria puffs up one cheek and looks away. Then, she smiles coyly, sticking out her tongue. “Is that okay?”

Sandalphon closes his eyes, sighing through his teeth. He shifts so that his back is facing her, tawny wings drooping over the edge of the bed. “Speak of this to no one.”

Eyes sparkling, Lyria dashes to grab a stool from the corner of the room and places it by the bedside. She sits and draws one of Sandalphon’s wings into her lap. He flinches slightly but waves a hand before Lyria tries to let go. 

Where once he had six wings, he now has two again. Those shimmering white ones only appear sometimes, only when Sandalphon draws on the power within him. Lyria has seen them unfold in a burst of light from his brown wings; they spread from two outward into six, feathers gleaming in every color of the rainbow. But both pairs are pretty in their own way, aren't they?

_ So fluffy… _

Lyria hums a little song as she soaks the washcloth, then dabs it lightly over the darker patches of feathers. Once they’re wet, she combs her fingers carefully through them. Sandalphon shudders, feeling a prickle in his bones. 

“What are you doing?” He looks over his shoulder. “Why not use the cloth?”

“If you’re too rough with feathers, they’ll tear off, and it could ruin their natural cleaning abilities.  Rosetta said that you’re supposed to gently wet them and add a little bit of olive oil to the bath to make them soft--”

“Again,” Sandalphon sputters, “I am not a bird!”

“I-I know! But I just want to be safe.”

“Just -- agh, just use the washcloth! A primarch is built far sturdier than a sparrow,” he grumbles. “There’s no need to bloody your hands.”

“Alright.”

They sit hushed for a few minutes as Lyria hums, rinsing the feathers and wringing out the cloth every so often. The water of the basin grows darker in the dim light of the room. 

“Um, Sandalphon?”

“Hm?”

“I’ve been wondering… if you don’t want to talk about it, it’s okay. But do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and feel something strange?”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe, um… a presence? An aura that isn’t yours or anyone else’s on the ship?”

Lyria wrings out the cloth. Bloody water plops into the basin. Sandalphon’s wings flare slightly, shaking off the excess moisture. 

“I thought I had imagined it,” he concedes. His head bows toward the bedsheets. “Both you and the Singularity sensed it, however.”

“Hmm. It feels like… when I listen to it, there’s a voice calling out. Asking for someone,” she says tentatively, eyes focused on a bushel of feathers. “And I can feel it across the entire ship, but… right here, from your room, it feels strongest.”

“No one enters or leaves this room but me; I have seen no one else. That would be impossible.”

“I see.” 

Though she doesn't sound convinced, finally, Lyria sets the washcloth down. “Well, anyway! You’re all cleaned up! How does that feel?”

“Better,” he mumbles. “I suppose.”

“I’m glad.”

As she rises and returns the stool to its place, Sandalphon rubs a hand along the back of his neck. He stares into the lantern, watches the quiet golden flame within. 

“Thank you, Sandalphon. It was nice talking to you.”  Lyria bows slightly, a warm smile on her face. She places one hand on the doorframe. “I’ll go now, but… if you ever need anything, you can ask me, okay?”

“Mm.” 

He turns around, smiling faintly. The flickering light illuminates the gentle curve of his lips.

“Thank you as well, Lyria.”


	6. poetry

_ so many nights we _

_ have met here _

 

Glass prisms spin slow in a vast, dark space. Sandalphon hangs like a marionette, suspended by beams of fractured light that connect each shape to the next. Six white wings at his back droop down, dripping red, lacerated, missing ripped-out feathers. 

He struggles and grasps one of his wings, starts tearing the feathers out in bloody fistfuls.

 

_ but we do not see each other clearly _

 

He is surrounded by his own rippling reflections. Crooked eyes bore through him. 

 

_ Sandalphon _

_ I _

_ am sorry _

 

Cracks echo in the emptiness glass shatter break the shapes, changing. Nothing is as was or is. Poetry is simple. Poetry is simple. Knowledge is complex heavy a thing with many many bony wings and bloody feathers. Poetry is simple. Where is Sandalphon’s face in his reflections?

 

_ if I could  _

_ choose, I would _

_ I would not want _

 

Porcelain bones of teacups shatter. The light beams bend and snap. Nothing rational here. Nonsense. Nonsense but poetry is simple he tries to remember poetry is simple.

 

_ i read a passage that _

_ reminded me of you _

 

That monster, the legacy, tall and impossible towers over him among black clouds, a mass of writhing souls that drip sludge from crying mouths all over its body. He cannot win. Poetry is simple like 

 

_ it begins with a simple question _

 

love should be simple like scooping his heart from his hollowed-out core should be simple like the fact that these dead angels are deathless in both their minds but he cannot win. It bellows and screams thrashing. Laughter shrieking. Crying

 

_ if i could choose _

 

Sandalphon falls and falls and falls and

 

_ i would not want you to live at the mercy of your dreams. _

  
  


⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘⚘

 

Cool water trickles like a river past Sandalphon’s ears. He hears the plinking before his eyes open, and when his auburn irises meet the world around him, the skies pour starlight inside. 

He is bare now among cracked and toppled stone pillars. On one naked shoulder he feels sunlight; the other moonlight, nightshade. Above him the sky is twain in two -- day at his left, night on his right. Celestial bodies impossibly intertwined in a vast aura of gold. 

In the shallow pool beneath him are stars reflected, and flowers blooming on its surface where they fall. This is the Astral Garden, but it is not the Astral Garden. 

Far to his left, their little glass coffee table lays in shattered, rusted pieces. 

“Can you see me, Sandalphon?”

Following the sound of the voice, Sandalphon crawls up onto his knees. His eyes widen, then grow heavy with sorrow. 

“Yes,” he exhales, shuddering. “But I wish I could not.”

Lucifer touches a hand to his bare chest, standing along the line where day and night meet on the horizon. He does not approach, but his eyes betray a longing to close the gap between them. 

“I have tried to reach you,” he says softly. “But I have not been able to. Not until this moment.”

“What do you mean? You are a dream. Nothing more. You are gone. How many times must I relive this story?”

“Perhaps I am only a dream. I apologize, if that is true… I cannot say for certain.”

Sandalphon’s brow furrows tighter. He laughs, voice breaking. “Ahaha, you speak just like him. Even my own mind seeks to torment me, doesn’t it? Go on -- die again if you will. Be carved to pieces, unravel into nothingness. I can no longer feel my own heart, anyway. Go ahead.”

“I will not. I believe I have strength enough right now to hold this form and speak with you.”

It’s unsettling how lucid he is. How real it feels. Still, that must be the trick, the lie, the deception -- Sandalphon stares the apparition down, unyielding. Lucifer does not yield, either.

“I wish to tell you the truth, Sandalphon. If I am to disappear again, it is the very least I can do.” He closes his eyes. “Be this a dream or not, I want only to cherish this moment with you.”

Mouth agape, Sandalphon says nothing. Against the sun and starlight, Lucifer’s back is bare; he has no six radiant wings any longer. His presence does not command nor awe. He is a man, here. Nothing more.

Shooting stars plop down into the pool below them both, leaving lotuses that bloom in their wake.

“For so long, Sandalphon… my heart was caged as such that I could not feel. When at last I did, perhaps it unsettled me. Perhaps I set it aside, so that it would not interfere with my duties. If I simply refused to acknowledge what you stirred in me, and did not assign you a purpose of your own, nothing would need to change... we could continue to meet in peace on those cherished afternoons we spent in the garden.”

The wind chimes clink and rustle, singing on his every word. Finally, Lucifer moves a cautious step closer. Then, a few more.

“I was content, but you suffered -- how easily my silence turned to negligence of your pain.” He closes his eyes. “It was selfish of me to take so much from you. Your presence filled me with something that resembled joy, where I had not known what joy truly was. What you gave me, Sandalphon, I could never replicate. Not even with all the powers of creation that I possessed.”

Each careful step Lucifer takes forward sends ripples through the shallow water at his feet. Where his toes touch the stone, white roses blossom. Sandalphon watches him approach without a word, without moving from where he rests on his knees.

Lucifer kneels down to join him and reaches for his cheek. “At least, I believed I could not replicate it,” he murmurs. His thumb strokes evenly in a steady rhythm. “I believed that I could not offer you anything in return… that we primarchs are not capable of such a thing as love.”

Love?

Love, he says. And love, love is what Sandalphon feels breaking in him, hollowing him wordless and empty. Love, the only truth he can comprehend, it washes over him and for the first time in thousands of years Sandalphon recognizes Lucifer again -- he no longer sits atop the ivory tower he built in his mind, no, he is so very close, so very much the man he was long ago in this shaded garden. His voice is that spring breeze, all that he touches is light, sunshine cradles his smile, the smell of coffee lingers where he sat at that little table... 

But this is just a dream.

“Do you remember the afternoon we read poetry together, here? When I was… as I lay dying, in Canaan,” Lucifer’s smile falters. “That passage returned to me; it was one that reminded me of you.”

It is wrong, irrational to believe this is anything more than a dream. False. Fake. There is no way. Sandalphon’s chest heaves with achy breaths.

“I wish that I could have recited it for you once more over a cup of coffee… do you remember?”

All he can do is nod, shoulders trembling. 

“It began with a simple question--”

Sandalphon reaches out and grasps Lucifer tightly as he sobs. Lucifer draws in a quick breath and carefully reciprocates, squeezing. The branches of a tall, old weeping willow curl down over them, shrouding the two in a sanctuary of leaves in deep blue and green as stars continue to fall. 

If nothing else makes sense in this broken, forgotten dream, the illusion of him is enough. 

“You, Lucifer,” Sandalphon chokes, pulling away to look at his face. “It is you who makes the sky blue.”

Lucifer stares back at him, lips parted. Though his expression does not change at all, a tear streams down his cheek; never, in thousands of years, has Sandalphon seen him cry. It startles Lucifer too, compelling him to touch a hand to his face. 

“Ah… I see that you grasp poetry now, Sandalphon.” He chuckles, leaning closer. “And perhaps, so do I.”

“That may be.”

At last the distance between them breaks, crumbling down like the walls of their very own Pandemonium, one that silence built. White roses bloom around them as their lips meet, forming a vast bed of soft petals that flutter toward the sun. Sandalphon holds tighter to Lucifer’s back, savoring every second of his presence, his warmth. 

When they part, Lucifer cannot help but smile, eyes closed as he ponders. “Ahh… how wonderful. I see now why skydwellers express love through their lips.”

“That’s… that is one way of putting it.” Sandalphon laughs slightly. His eyes close as Lucifer runs a hand gently through his hair.

 

_ what makes the sky blue? _

“Could we try once more?”

 

_ we whisper the question, a prayer that only _

_ forgotten breaths remember _

 

Sandalphon’s heart catches in his throat, and he barely gasps a quiet yes before they’re clinging to each other again.

 

_ these little wind-wishes that carry across the horizon _

 

As he meets them once more, Sandalphon knows these lips commanded legions of angels, breathed life into the clouds, the stars, the life in every weeping willow and honeysuckle surrounding them. Each of Lucifer’s tender kisses leaves that light behind, that golden hum of creation. He opens his mouth wider, hands shaking as they cling to Lucifer’s back.

 

_ the answer need not come _

“Mm…”

 

_ for the asking _

_ the yearning _

_ is etched along our bones  _

_ written in the soul _

 

Sandalphon gasps as Lucifer’s kisses trail down his neck, lips pressing steady against him.

 

_ and there is no simpler truth than wanting _

 

“I-I… ah!”

 

_ what we cannot have _

_ no simpler need _

 

 

“Lucifer--”

 

_ than to chase the clouds to their very end _

_ until we breathe in the wisps and the sunlight for the last time _

_ and the sky makes us blue, too _

 

“Lucifer!”

Sandalphon jolts awake gasping. That aura -- it’s unmistakable. It’s somewhere, scattered everywhere and nowhere on the air.

He throws off the bedsheets and runs above deck, feet clattering against the wood.

Above him the sun is raised high on its golden throne of dawn. The sky stretches on blue across the infinite horizon. Chest heaving, his expression falters. 

No one else is here.

Clouds scatter like petals of white roses on the wind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaand that's it, thanks for playing
> 
> i hope you enjoyed it. i really love writing about dreams and fractured realities so this was fun if nothing else. OH right also, here is the poem without the making out between it...
> 
> what makes the sky blue?  
> we whisper the question, a prayer that only  
> forgotten breaths remember  
> these little wind-wishes that carry across the horizon  
> the answer need not come  
> for the asking  
> the yearning  
> is etched along our bones   
> written in the soul  
> and there is no simpler truth than wanting  
> what we cannot have  
> no simpler need  
> than to chase the clouds to their very end  
> until we breathe in the wisps and the sunlight for the last time  
> and the sky makes us blue, too
> 
> the idea that lucifer first encountered that question in a skydweller poetry book tickled me for some reason, so i ran with it as a central core in this piece. 
> 
> thanks for readin


End file.
